Political Elements in the Music of M.I.A
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POLITICAL ELEMENTS IN THE MUSIC OF M.I.A. Master’s thesis Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies University of Helsinki Musicology April 2012 Irene Lönnblad CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 1 2 WHO IS M.I.A.? .............................................................................................. 3 2.1 Becoming M.I.A. ..................................................................................... 3 2.2 Political background ................................................................................ 6 3 TECHNOLOGY: MAKING AND SELLING BEATS ................................... 9 3.1 Portable world .......................................................................................... 9 3.2 Electronics and the drum machine ......................................................... 11 4 WHOSE CULTURE, WHOSE RULES? ....................................................... 16 4.1 Local becomes global ............................................................................ 16 4.2 Ethnicity, race and style ......................................................................... 20 4.2.1 Connective marginalities ............................................................ 23 4.2.2 “Can’t stereotype my thing yo” .................................................. 26 4.3 The domination of the markets .............................................................. 29 4.3.1 Cultural resistance ...................................................................... 29 4.3.2 Power moves ............................................................................... 32 5 A REVOLUTIONARY AND A WOMAN ................................................... 37 5.1 Making a name as an outsider ................................................................ 37 5.2 Feminist approach .................................................................................. 41 5.3 Representation and sexuality ................................................................. 45 6 LOOKING INTO SEVEN M.I.A. SONGS ................................................... 49 6.1 Galang (2005f) ....................................................................................... 49 6.2 Bucky Done Gun (2005d) ...................................................................... 52 6.3 Bird Flu (2007c) ..................................................................................... 55 6.4 Jimmy (2007e) ....................................................................................... 59 6.5 Paper Planes (2007i) .............................................................................. 62 6.6 Born Free (2010a) .................................................................................. 66 6.7 XXXO (2010h) ...................................................................................... 72 7 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................ 77 BIBLIOGRAPHY…................................................................................................... 80 1 INTRODUCTION Popular music has often reflected the politics of its time, whether emphasizing or disregarding those politics, they have played an important role in such music's development. Although the gatekeepers of music, the record labels, still control their artists and the music business, alternative ways to make and promote music have challenged this power structure. During the last few decades the development of digital technologies has had an enormous impact on how people are making, distributing and listening to music. The latest hit songs can reach wider audiences faster than ever and one only needs an Internet connection to have access to an endless amount of different types of music. One musician who has reached fame and success through such new mediums is an artist who calls herself M.I.A. and whose song 'Paper Planes' from her album Kala (2007f) became one of the biggest hits in 20081. Since her first album M.I.A. has taken an active role commenting on what is going on in the developing world, and strongly criticizing western governments such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Even though she is breaking the many existing norms of the music business and purposely provoking audiences, M.I.A. has managed to reach fame and make her voice heard. The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze and interpret the various political elements in M.I.A.’s multicultural music and how they are decoded by the listeners and media. By approaching M.I.A. from different perspectives, from technological to cultural, while not forgetting the meaning of gender and race, this study attempts to examine how she has been able to turn politically inspired material into hit songs, reached audiences all over the world and managed to avoid the stereotypes attached to women in popular music. To be able to fully understand the connotations in her music, visual images, such as music videos and cover art, have also been included as a part of this study. 1 ‘Paper Planes’ (2007h) peaked at the position 19 making it M.I.A.’s first top 20 hit in the UK as well as her first song in Billboard Hot 100. It was nominated for the Record of the Year at the Grammy Awards in 2009 and has sold over 3 million copies in the United States. (Acharts 2010.) The structure of this thesis is not linear but can be more seen as a circular form, where three different perspectives, technology, culture and gender, are overlapping and interacting with each other. Each chapter will reveal a new aspect to M.I.A.'s music and her political narrative. As her refugee background plays an important role both in M.I.A.'s life and in her art, chapter two presents her personal and political history. In the third chapter M.I.A.'s music and her career are examined through the perspective of technology by understanding the importance of the Internet in the development of her career as well as the new digital ways of making music. The fourth chapter is dedicated to culture and different cultural approaches introducing the global/local dichotomy, the issue of race and style, the use and meaning of hip hop, the connective marginalities and cultural resistance. Censorship and the role of media are also examined at the end of the chapter. In chapter five the focus is on gender and sexual representation and how M.I.A.'s politics are also related to feminism and the women's movement. Supporting the previous chapters, in chapter seven a number of M.I.A.'s songs and their associated music videos are analyzed. Because M.I.A. has been making music for less than ten years, there is not much previous study made of her besides academic papers2 and theses such as this one. For this reason the theoretical base of the thesis relies in part on the writings of academically distinguished scholars together with the many interviews of M.I.A. to be able to combine the social and technological as well as the cultural and gender aspects of her career and music. In chapter three Timothy D. Taylor's (1997, 2001) and Sanna Rojola's (2007) ideas are combined to examine M.I.A.'s relationship to technology. In the culture chapter, to cite a few references, globalization is viewed by Roland Robertson (1992), race and hip hop by Marcyliena Morgan (2009) and Halifu Osumare (2007), and cultural resistance by Stephen Duncombe (2002). Gender and sexual representations in chapter five follow the ideas of Tricia Rose (1994, 2008), Kimberlé W. Crenshaw (1989), Patricia Hill Collins (2000), Norma Coates (1997), Teresa de Lauretis (1987), Chris Weedon (1999) and bell hooks (1986 [1981], 1998). 2 Melissa Kapadia-Bodi's paper Rereading in the Subaltern: Language, Politics, Power (2008) that mentions M.I.A. came up while searching articles on her on the Internet. 2 2 WHO IS M.I.A.? M.I.A. is a singer, rapper, songwriter, director, artist, and producer who has been making unique electronic music for the last decade. She has made three albums Arular (2005b) Kala (2007f) and MAYA (2010e) and collaborated with many other artists. Her music is a mixture of different genres some of which are hip hop, Jamaican dance hall, pop, rock, bhangra, electro and grime, and the samples she uses in her music can come from an old Bollywood track as well as from the late 1970’s British punk bands such as the Clash. All these elements in her music come together in an interesting and unconventional way, forming an innovative sound that is faintly familiar but does not neatly fall within one specific culture or genre. 2.1 Becoming M.I.A. Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, better known as M.I.A., was born in London in 1976, but her family returned to Sri Lanka when she was still a baby. The reason for the family's return to Sri Lanka was Maya’s father's intense desire to participate in the uprising of the Tamil minority. Growing up in an unstable and war torn environment, where air raids, kidnappings and murders were part of everyday life, has left its mark on Maya and on her music. Her guerrilla father devoted himself to the Tamil movement and remained distant to the family. In 1986 Maya’s mother, with her three children, decided to escape from the growing violence of Sri Lanka while Maya’s father was left behind to fight for the rights of the Tamils. The family was granted asylum in England and were now refugees relegated to the tough borough of Merton on the outskirts of London. She was brought up in South London, in an area